Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Goode pictures are where you can find them, likely most pictures wont turn out, but I’m glad I had my camera ready the foggy morning I drove from Portland to San Francisco.
Taking pictures from a moving vehicle are also tricky business, you have to be ready at any moment to get that one in 50 that actually looks okay.
I find that at a 50mm zoom (about 2x) really helps cut out the ground blur on the things that are the closest to the car.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
SparkFun just released an Arduino-compatible autopilot board designed by Chris Anderson and Jordi Muñoz of DIY Drones. I checked out Chris' board a while back and was under the impression that it was still under construction, though if SparkFun is manufacturing the board now it must be ready for the average hobbist.
For $85 you can have the brains and GPS for your own UAV.
Personally I've always wanted to create a boat UAV that autonomously roves the coast traveling to far away places with a cellular modem reporting back with pictures and charging with solar panels.
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8785
Everyone loves a good freshly baked desert, including myself.
I took the super close up with a 50mm lens with a macro attachment, the two below were with the standard 50mm lens at f1.8.
Monday, January 05, 2009
If you ever decide to design something mechanical, eventually you’ll need some gears. I’ve been experimenting with gears and my laser engraver testing the limits of it’s resolution.
The first thing I found out is that drawing gears is hard, they are complex in ways you might not realize at first. Gear teeth aren’t simple squares, or triangles, or a easy combination of the two. The teeth are angled based on the diameter of the gear and the pressure angle you specify. See the two following images to compare a small diameter gear and a large diameter gear with the same size teeth (20px) and pressure angle (20).
Luckily there is a easy tool for creating gears, the “Gear” effect in Inkscape.
Inkscape is an open-source vector based drawing program, similar in some ways to Adobe Illustrator.
To create a gear in Inkscape simply go to Effects > Render > Gear. A dialogue will appear that lets you choose how many, and how big you want the teeth to be.
Once you have you gears created you can export them to your laser, cnc, or other drawing program. Inkscape 0.46 has many export formats including DXF, SVG, and EPS.
Here are two images from a few test gears I’ve cut, the large wooden gear has teeth that are about 4mm each, the acrylic gear on the ruler is the same model at 50% size (2mm teeth).
All in all, I'm pleased with the ability to cut gears with the laser, though I doubt I'll be able to cut gears with teeth much smaller then 2mm.
The human eye is infinitely interesting to me, it seems that the closer you look the more there is to see, especially in the detail of the iris.
These photos were taken with a ring flash (you can see the refection in the eye), and it gives them a bleached, almost sterile appearance.
John Aho’s 2nd gallery is a large collection of images from PSCombine 1.5 with some real gems amidst the 159 image gallery, check it out over at flickr.
If you have generated any images that you would like to share, send me some by email, or upload them to flickr and tag them with PSCombine.
For more info about PSCombine see: 4volt.com/projects/PSCombine.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
There’s nothing like having a good knob or two around for some good tactile feedback, that’s why this analog style midi sequencer is one of my favorite instruments. If you are not familiar, it’s designed so that each slider is a note, and it runs though all the sliders to create a little melody that you can change while it’s playing.
Also the black on white styling reminds me of star wars.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
The best part of this picture is the contrast of the smoke on the dark background.
Smoke is a pretty difficult thing to photograph, though with a bright flash and a dark background you can get some great results.
This picture was taken with the same poser board technique as image-a-day 22, but with a black poster board.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
This is from one of my first attempts to use “real” photography lights and a white background in 2004, even though my photography and lighting techniques have improved quite a bit since then, I generally still use the same type of background.
I use a semi-glossy poster board that curves from the table to the wall, it works well for small objects and is very inexpensive. Also. if you get the poster board dirty you can always toss it out and grab a new one for a dollar or two.
Description
This business card is a tri-folded laser cut card meant to look like a old school cassette tape.
The advantage this card has over other is that there's a zipper seal (like on UPS envelopes) on the back of the card that lets you open it like a tri-fold brochure so you can fit a mini-portfolio or a bunch of text on your usually too small business card.
This design gives you about 3.5 x 4in of space that you can't see when the card is folded and sealed.
It's possible to print the card on standard thickness paper, or card stock, though printing and folding normal paper turns out to be the the most similar to a standard business card in thickness.
Instructions
- Design: Customize the "Print Side" design, use the PDF as a template. If you wish to have an inside design, you'll need to print on the back side of the page as well, you can use the "Cut side" pdf as a template to design this side.
- Print: The top side of the design, this will be the outside of the card (the front, back, and label).
- Print: The back side of the design, this will be the inside of the card that you can't see when it is sealed.
After the card is printed you can use the registration marks in the corner of the sheet to align the page with the laser bed. They should appear in the same relative place on all prints. - Cut: Use the "Cut side" PDF, DXF, or EPS to import to your lasers drawing program. Potentially you could also use an exacto knife to do this.
- Fold: Once your have the card that has been printed on both sides, as well as on cut, you can use the three cut marks to fold the card in the right spots.
- Glue the bottom most part of the zipper seal to the back of the card. I used a small dab of super glue for this.
You can download all the files you need to make this card here:
I’ve also posted this design over at: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:267